Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind

by Hans Moravec

I was a little disappointed by Robot. Although Hans Moravec is a leading thinker in the field of artificial intelligence and a true pioneer of robotic research, he is not an especially talented writer. Nevertheless, his knowledge is prodigious and the quality of his ideas makes the book worth reading.

One thing that annoyed me was that Moravec overuses the word “robot”. He goes to pains to apply the name even to other forms of artificial intelligence that have little resemblance to what we normally think of as robots. I also found his writing style somewhat tedious, a bit like sitting through a long lecture by a brilliant but boring professor.

There are other books I would recommend ahead of Robot, most notably The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil. But if you’ve already devoured the others and you’re still hungry for more, Hans Moravec will certainly give you plenty to chew on.